We Like it Hot (Not)

Luck, it appears, is relative, as in, "We are lucky that our furnace died in May instead of in January." Even in Central Alberta, it is unlikely that one will die of exposure if the furnace craps out in May.

I'm guessing that heating and cooling emporia have business models that don't take May furnace sales into account. Sure, they know how to sell you a furnace if you call them in a state of panic because it is -40 and your furnace has died. They know that you will not be comparison shopping and that you are willing to sell your first born, if necessary. Call them on May 8 and ask that someone come by to give you an estimate, and these same companies are entirely perplexed.

It shouldn't be this hard to find someone to write a check to for something you really don't want to buy at all—especially when it is for $6700.

We finally were able to get three companies to come out, look at our house, and grudgingly write up estimates. Looking at the weather forecast, it appears that we will be having the furnace installed and putting the window air conditioner in our bedroom on the same day.

Aren't we lucky!

 

posted by taming at 07:34 | link | comments (3)|
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Nicole and the Donut Hole

I'm probably not Canadian enough to blog about Tim Horton's. No doubt one has to be born and bred to understand the role this iconic purveyor of bad coffee and fried dough has on the Canadian psyche. But it's Monday, and I'll give it a try, anyway.

Some background...

I tried a cup of Tim Horton's coffee in 2001, shortly after I immigrated. I found it to be insipid and never went back. I didn't make a big fuss about it because I understood that Timmies is a Canadian Institution (in the big "C" big "I" sorta way). I worried that I would appear ungrateful, or worse, too American, if I said anything. And then, after all, when the US has offered up Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts to the world, there really wasn't much I could say.

I simply had my coffee elsewhere (urmmm, that would be at home) until last year when I went back to work doing case management and found that my clients considered a trip with them to Tim's, periodically, to be part of the job. I'd order a small black coffee and pretend to drink it whilst my client had a huge double double and the requisite piece of fried dough. At meetings, people would bring in TimBits (aka donut holes), and if I needed a little sugar shock to get through the event, I'd indulge.

I never really did get why millions of Canadians would stand in line daily (sometimes numerous times each day) to order something inedible and then wash it down with something impotable, but culture is like that.

Despite all of this, I really did understand the national outrage when three thugs posing as Tim Horton junior managers fired a worker because she gave a free TimBit to a child. The story was movingly told in every newspaper in the country. I could picture the young child, snot coursing down her cheek, as she accompanied her mother in search of her third Timmie fix of the day. I could imagine the smiles of those in line as the worker held out the bit of dough. Heck, I could even see the pimples on the faces of the managers who whisked her in the back and insisted she sign an admission of guilt before they fired her from her $9.05 an hour job.

Her reinstatement was also foreseeable, as was the public apology—behold the power of the press.

The part that surprised me was how ungrateful, how unCanadian, this single mother of four would be now that she had her job back. Imagine that. Nicole says her career with Tim Horton's is over and that she will have to look for another job because "no one will like me."

Rumour has it that a smoothie shop has already offered her a new job. 

 

posted by taming at 05:52 | link | comments (1)|
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Am I Annoying You? Here, Have Some Coffee

After a day of cane practice, I'm off to work this AM and hoping to make it through the day without any further mishaps. I'm also hoping that someone takes pity on me and helps me carry things from my car to the office as I seem to have quite the bundle of shtuff.

Asking for help doesn't come easy to me. Fortunately, I work for a social service agency, so I am pretty much surrounded all day by professional nurturers. I'm figuring that if I look perplexed and/or pathetic, someone will come to my aid. The reward for whoever helps will be a wonderful pot of coffee, once the new coffee maker actually enters the office.

On Sunday I roasted Colombia Huila - Las Piedras de San Augustin and now, with four days rest, it is truly magnificent. I am itching to share it with my co-workers, several of whom are definitely coffee fiends. In his review, Tom (of Sweet Marias) says: "I would rank this as a top "crowd-pleaser" coffee." That's what I was going for today, and I think I nailed the roast.

I drink coffee like some people drink wine and all too often, what I like about a particular bean is just not what folks think of when talking coffee. And while people generally are amazed when they find that some coffee I am sharing has a hit of blueberry in the cup, it seems that there are a whole lot of folks who are looking for something more archetypically coffee like.  This is the coffee for them.

And given that I am going to be a bigger pain in the butt than usual for the next two to three months, bringing in crowd pleaser coffee, from time to time, seems like a very wise move.

 

posted by taming at 06:16 | link | comments (2)|
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Note From an Old Hippy

I tend to ignore it whenever my body misbehaves by showing its age in the form of creaks and pains. Sure, I'm inching up toward 60, but I've always figured that I can ignore that teeny tiny bit of truth.

The result is that I sometimes ignore things that I should pay attention to—for example, a (slightly) fractured hip.

About ten days ago, I fell on the ice. It was what, in the world of babies learning to walk, is known as "fall down and go boom". That is, I landed directly on my not-very-well-padded bum. At the time, I congratulated myself for not having stuck out my arm and ending up with a sprained wrist. In fact, I felt just fine for about three days.

When I woke up on day four, it felt like someone had hit me on the hip with a curling rock.  I blamed it on the nighttime accommodations made to my bed partners (that would be two cats and my fella). When it hurt worse after a trip down the stairs, I figured my body was looking for an excuse to call in sick to work. I didn't, of course, and I have been trudging to work each day as the pain got worse and worse.

Yesterday I realized that it was nigh on time for this to be over, no matter what the cause, and I went to the doctor and then for x-rays. Yup, I had a fracture, and no matter how much I tried it wasn't going away any time soon. 

I may be moving out of the downstairs cave and into the upstairs cave for a few weeks. Stairs are a real problem just now. At home, it means the moving of my desktop computer from our subterranean office/family room to the above ground portion of the house. I could do the laptop in bed thing, but I am a desktop kinda gal.

It also means a part-time separation from Ron. It's one thing to move my computer and associated paraphernalia, but it's quite another to move his set-up too. That would mean moving not just a computer, but also a big screen TV, the TiVO, and all the other techie toys associated with his life.

I, however, get all of the coffee making equipment. Fair is fair.

 

posted by taming at 05:34 | link | comments (8)|
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Clan of the Cave Bean

I'm in the process of moving into my office at work. Now, I've had that same cave-like space for over a year, but up until now, I haven't actually worked in there for more than a few hours a week. It's not that I didn't have scads of paperwork that I could have done in the office; I just didn't have enough time during the day to do my work with clients in their homes and get into the office as well. I did my paperwork on-line at home.

This is changing. Beginning next week, I have what appears to be a regular job. That means I will be working 8-4:30, Monday through Friday and most of the time, I will be a cave-dweller.

And, it is truly cave like. There are no windows in any of the offices. My office is down in the basement, toward the back of the building. On the plus side, that means my office is fairly cool in the summer (Air conditioning? This is Alberta, we don't need no stinkin' air conditioning.) and it doesn't turn into a steam bath when the heat is on in the winter. It is also quiet down there. Very, very quiet.

On the minus side, the office kitchen, where the coffee is located, is upstairs.

I pondered this sorry state of affairs for almost seven minutes before I came up with a solution. Now, it's not like the office coffee is drinkable, because it's not. We have a second rate coffee pot and big red plastic bins of Folgers. It took me seven minutes to arrive at a solution only because I was not sure  if I could be considered a team player if I ran out and bought my own coffee equipment before I actually moved into my space.

I also had to think of a sensible way to explain to my husband that I was about to spend in the neighbourhood of $300 on yet more coffee equipment when I wasn't actually getting a raise. 

It turned out that this wasn't all that difficult. When I called my husband and told him that I was being brought "inside", he asked me if I had ordered the coffee equipment from work, or if I was planning on waiting until I got home that night.

I guess the man knows me pretty well.

 

posted by taming at 04:45 | link | comments (6)|
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